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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24494137">These Days</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaoru_chibimaster/pseuds/Kaoru_chibimaster'>Kaoru_chibimaster</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>FF7 Omegaverse Week [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alpha Cloud, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Fluff, M/M, Omega Zack, Reincarnation, Scenting</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 05:02:08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,463</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24494137</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaoru_chibimaster/pseuds/Kaoru_chibimaster</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Some things you just don’t forget. Even across another lifetime.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Zack Fair/Cloud Strife</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>FF7 Omegaverse Week [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1769554</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>90</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>ff7omegaverseweek</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>These Days</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p><b>*dumps this on the floor*</b> I didn’t know this omegaverse week was a thing until yesterday but I’m already living for it. <strike>I also missed day one but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ so this is kind of a mixture of that prompt and the modern prompt</strike></p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was different last time.</p>
<p>Weird that there even was a last time, but well…</p>
<p>“You smell kinda weird,” Zack chuckled, wearing that same strangely familiar grin, followed by that strangely familiar gesture of rubbing the back of his head. All strange because, as far as this lifetime went, Cloud had only known Zack for all of ten minutes. “Like, back when… Uh…”</p>
<p>Keyword: <em>this</em> lifetime. Zack’s “back when” trailed off into an awkward silence that Cloud’s mind easily supplanted with “back during our former lives”.</p>
<p>It also wasn’t hard to see where he was going with his train of thought.</p>
<p>There was something dry and wooden playing in the back of Cloud’s mind like an old phonograph, quality grainy and irritating—like trying to listen through white noise—that droned on about how everything was recycled through the lifestream. Every person, plant, animal; every drop of energy expended. It was a known fact that every person had a past life.</p>
<p>In Cloud’s, he’d been an omega, and Zack an alpha.</p>
<p>…He’d also been running around with Eco Terrorists that picked fights with a cartoonishly evil electric company, but that was thankfully irrelevant to the topic at hand.</p>
<p>It wasn’t common for one to remember their past life, but it also wasn’t completely unheard of. When their consciousness joined the lifestream, sometimes memories lingered. It led to situations like this where Cloud, who’d been going about his business on his way to work, ended up running into his past mate and recognizing him on sight.</p>
<p>It was unexpected, to say the least.</p>
<p>“Back when we were…you know,” Zack continued, stirring his fry into his shake like a heathen. Who even ordered fries and a milkshake for breakfast? “You used to have that really gentle scent, like fresh rain and flowers, until the mako screwed it up.”</p>
<p>Right. Zack had already had that problem, from what Cloud remembered. Having already joined SOLDIER by the time Cloud met him, he’d carried something manufactured and septic in his scent. Something eerily similar to the smell that emanated from the reactors’ mako storage rooms. It’d corrupted his natural scent, bending it into something difficult to describe. Clearly alpha and yet clearly more than that. More than human.</p>
<p>He never liked it, but he liked Zack enough to get over it.</p>
<p>Besides, he’d smelled the same after Hojo’s experiments.</p>
<p>“Now though… It’s still you, but it’s not. If that makes sense?” Zack was babbling now, talking around a mouthful of chocolate shake and french fries. Cloud had yet to touch his food, not even glancing at his plate of cooling eggs and pancakes as the marvel that was his old mate continued to chatter through his nerves. Considering the situation though, Cloud couldn’t blame him. This was so…<em>off</em>.</p>
<p>“You still smell like fresh rain, but it’s not as sweet? There’s something headier there. Very alpha of you.”</p>
<p>In contrast, Zack had gained a soft, sweetness to his scent that pushed all memories of his previous scent from Cloud’s mind. It was akin to rolling fields of grass and thick, foresty tree sap. Something reminiscent of his home in Gongaga. Fitting, despite the fact that these days, Gongaga had long since been rebuilt and expanded. With Midgar no longer around to syphon life out of the planet, other towns found the opportunity to grow and find their own sources of energy. The planet was no longer caught in the thrall of Shinra’s iron fist. Long gone was that cocoon of trees and that ruined reactor.</p>
<p>Cloud could still imagine what it had looked like if he closed his eyes and concentrated. Even when it clashed with the image of the small town it now was, complete with asphalt streets, modern houses, and transformers lining the sidewalks. Sort of like his own hometown, though Nibelheim still carried that innate sense of foreboding with the shadow of Mt. Nibel hanging over it.</p>
<p>“You look bored. Am I rambling too much?”</p>
<p>Ah. Cloud hadn’t realized he’d actually closed his eyes, and when they opened again he was met with the nervous knit of a brow and twist of the mouth. Zack probably wasn’t used to this sort of silence from Cloud. The last they’d interacted, <em>truly</em> interacted, Cloud had been young and excitable.</p>
<p>He certainly smiled a lot more.</p>
<p>These days, he’d probably be a bit more open and talkative if his job wasn’t kicking his ass, but he couldn’t deny that it was more so the shock of meeting Zack again that kept him quiet now.</p>
<p>“You’re not,” he finally piped up. “I’m still trying to process everything.”</p>
<p>“Oh. Yeah, I get that…”</p>
<p>Zack was frowning now, trying and failing to hide it by running his hands through black locks and ducking his head down as if he’d suddenly gained an intense interest in his half-empty basket of fries. Cloud wasn’t sure he liked that… No. Something in him <em>really</em> didn’t like that.</p>
<p>It wasn’t right if Zack wasn’t smiling.</p>
<p>“Hey,” he started, certain that his tone was as awkward as ever. He wasn’t used to doing these sorts of things. Meeting up with people in little diners in the heart of Edge, eating breakfast with strangers who weren’t really strangers, asking them out… “We could do this again? Maybe after I get off work, because…”</p>
<p>Cloud checked his phone for the time. Twenty minutes late.</p>
<p>“Shit.”</p>
<p>“Oh shit, that’s right! You were going to work, weren’t you?” With that, Zack stood from his seat and started waving at the waitstaff, likely looking for a bill and possibly a carry-out box.</p>
<p>“Hang on,” Cloud sighed, pulling up his contact list and hitting the plus sign. He’d at least have to get Zack’s number so they could communicate when and where.</p>
<p>“Here. Text me later.” God knew Cloud was unlikely the be the one to text first.</p>
<p>It seemed Zack didn’t mind, considering how his eyes lit up with excitement as he grabbed the phone from Cloud and started tapping his number in. He took a moment longer, swiping and fiddling with the screen while he—Cloud assumed here—texted Cloud’s number to his phone. That took care of that, at least.</p>
<p>“This is great! Now we can catch up later without work looming over our heads!” Zack grinned, wide and toothy and very <em>him</em>, handing the phone back with quick, impulsive movements that nearly sent the thing flying out of his fingers. And then practically knocking his shake over when he started gesticulating an apology.</p>
<p>Sheesh. Zack still managed to hold onto that puppyish enthusiasm even into the next life. It was almost endearing, but Cloud couldn’t quite focus on that.</p>
<p>Not when Zack’s scent filled his senses again, stronger now what with Zack’s hands waving everywhere. Cloud reached out almost mindlessly, grasping a warm wrist and feeling a steady, almost comforting pulse against his skin. It was a loose grip, something Zack could easily pull out of, but something about it still felt significant. Heavier than something so simple as grabbing someone’s hand ought to be.</p>
<p>The silence he was met with in response wasn’t uncomfortable. Something in Zack’s scent was inviting even, as if he liked that Cloud was touching him. Maybe he even wanted Cloud to touch him more…</p>
<p>That was such a forward thought process though. Cloud squashed that down before it could turn into something intrusive.</p>
<p>“We can go get dinner or something. In the meantime,” Cloud trailed off, turning Zack’s hand over until the underside of his wrist, and the subsequent minor scent gland underneath the skin there, was on display. It wasn’t so suggestive to press Cloud’s own wrist to the spot, leaving a lingering reminder of himself there. A sign that he was interested, despite how blindsided he might’ve been by the circumstances.</p>
<p>“Wow. Is that flirting I see?” Zack chuckled. He hadn’t pulled his hand away, so he couldn’t have been too upset by that.</p>
<p>Cloud couldn’t help the warm flush that blanketed his cheeks anyway, letting go of Zack entirely before standing from his own seat.</p>
<p>“Think whatever you want. I’ve gotta go, so—wait. Didn’t you call one of the waitstaff over?” Cloud peered around the little diner, taking note of how no one was headed in their direction. A flash of dark blue at the edge of the table caught his eye as he looked, and he glanced down just as Zack grabbed it. The amused glint in his eye as he looked the little booklet over told Cloud everything he needed to know.</p>
<p>“Someone did come over,” he grinned, completely unashamed at what that implicated. Someone had to have come over while Cloud was scenting Zack, and they… “They left the bill.”</p>
<p>Well, that was embarrassing.</p>
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